


Entre Chien et Loup

by laughingmistress



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Creeping Dread, Gen, Halloween, Serious offscreen mayhem that definitely involves people getting a bad case of dead, Threats, Werewolf, if the dread doesn't creep was there even a halloween fic at all, or i hope so anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:15:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27087709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingmistress/pseuds/laughingmistress
Summary: Eponine stepped out from an alley and grinned.Marius took a step back, unsure why the fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled.Things are about to go very badly at the house on Rue Plumet.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 16





	1. I - An Apparition To Marius

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my annual Hallowe'en fic for 2020. It feels like rather a feat, as I have barely been able to write at all during our "unprecedented times" But after three years, I think I can call this a tradition: there must be a hallowe'en story! I think this isn't likely to go longer than three instalments, which I'll be dropping between now and the end of October. I hope you enjoy it, and that i manage to at least somewhat tickle your spookybone! 
> 
> Entre chien et loup: (lit.) between dog and wolf; a french expression for twilight, carrying some of the same supernatural connotation as the english phrase "the witching hour".

Marius Pontemercy was not unaware of his status as a noodle.

It was not that he was _un_ intelligent. If anything, he tended to suffer an excess of things in his head—he followed his own obsessions about in his mind such that there was little room for anything else. Before Ursulahad come to be the focus of his thoughts he had excelled in languages; at the urging of his good friend Courfeyrac he had learned both English and German in the space of a slowly-swallowed hundred sous.

Perhaps he should have begun with the lower forms of french. Eponine's argot had confused him, when he'd met her before.

He had not seen her in a long space of time. He wasn't sure how long, anymore. A few weeks? A month? When had he left the Gorbeau house, again? But now, she appeared before him in the street, seeming nearly a ghost—thin, insubstantial, a thing from out of a past he had almost forgotten. She stepped out from an alley and grinned, seeing him. The light of a streetlamp shone off her teeth in the grey evening.

Marius took a step back, unsure why the fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

“M'sieur Marius!” she said.

She made him uneasy. It was a failing, to be afraid of poverty. It was not a miasma, catching. And he was poor, too, if not as poor as she. Marius forced his back straight, and his eyes to hers. He did not like meeting people's eyes, but knew it made him look weak to do otherwise, spineless. His grandfather had said so, over and over.

She did not look well.

She looked beautiful.

No one should be able to be both at once. It was a strange thing, unnatural, and made no sense, for the things that added up to her sum should have equalled only the first: Whip thin. Sharp of collarbone, of eye, gleaming golden-brown. Marius decided to look a bit below them, after all.

Sharp of tooth. He remembered a thing she had said, pouncing on a crust of old bread. _That's good! It's hard. It will break my teeth!_ Her teeth did not look like breaking things. Her hair was tangled and matted around her pale moon face, and had bits of _things_ in it, chaff and leaves and little twigs.

Maybe fleas? It was wise he had stepped back.

Eponine's face had fallen, the light in her eyes dimmed. “You aren't happy to see me.” They lit again. “But I could make you happy! You don't know!”

Marius wondered if the poor girl had gone mad. She looked mad. Her clothes were rags, hanging off of her. Her feet were bare.

“I have the address!”

Marius was confused. “What address..?”

Eponine laughed at him, a bark. “What address, he says! Maybe I shouldn't tell you! But I want to see you smile, so—! I know where you can find her.”

Her?

Oh!

He'd asked her to find them, an old man and a young woman. _Ursula..._ It should have been impossible, taken a bloodhound.

Eponine stopped laughing. “Well, I was right. You are smiling. I'll have to take you, I couldn't read the street. Why you're so interested in that mouse...but you promised, do you remember, to gave me anything I wanted?” She poked out her chin.

Marius rifled in his pocket. He knew there were coins there, silver, the five francs he was saving for Thenardier. He fumbled them out, and went to put them into her hand.

She pulled back, letting the coins drop. They rang on the cobbles.

She _looked_ at him.

“I don't want your money, sir.”

Marius had the strangest impulse, that he ought to turn and flee. Eponine seemed bigger, when she fixed her eyes on him like that...she looked like hunger.

He was being a damned noodle again.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought...” He wasn't sure what he had thought. It felt like they stood there for a long time, before Eponine took his arm. Marius imagined that the tips of her fingernails pricked his skin, even through his dark green coat. Eponine looked at him, and suddenly grinned again, giving his arm a small tug.

 _Sharp,_ Marius Pontmercy thought. _Sharp in tooth and claw._

He thought again of his Ursula, and went with Eponine, leaving the coins on the ground.


	2. A Concern for Dark Corners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bar in the fence had not been loose, not until she had twisted it. Eponine wasn't sure how she had gotten so strong.
> 
> Eponine waits outside the garden of the house on the rue Plumet.

Eponine let M'sieur Marius into the garden of the house on the Rue Plumet.

The bar had not been loose, not until she had twisted it. She wasn't sure how she had gotten so strong.

Eponine wan't sure why she twisted it back again after he had gone in, either, except that she felt a deep dark dread in her belly, under the gnawing emptiness she was more used to. It was important that Marius was safe inside. Even if he was with _her._

Perhaps she should have come on her own, paid the garden a visit by herself.

The little lark inside.

That thought brought back the darkness in her belly, the new hunger. It was deeper and more grinding than the little hunger she'd known before. She did not think she could fill it with crusts and crumbs. The new hunger scared Eponine, so she stopped thinking of it. It was always easier, not to think so much. She leaned into the shadow where the gate met the wall, and tried not to think at all.

It seemed there was always something prowling around the edges of her mind now. Had been for the past month, ever since they'd let her out after her single night at Les Madelonettes. The gaol had left nothing in her head for her to think of. She had went in one evening, and she had come out the next morn. Between the two was only a hole, a night like a great dark gaping maw.

Eponine had not been cold once since she had left that place, even though someone had stolen her shawl in those empty hours she did not recall. She felt like a banked fire. Smouldering. Waiting for someone to blow on her, and then, _then,_ something would spark.

She shuddered, and wrapped her arms around herself, but it was only for the sake of memory and the want of comfort. She hoped that the clouds would break soon, let the moon through. It was too dark in the street.

Dangerous things roamed in the dark. Hungry things.

Wolves.

Eponine had a bad feeling about tonight. She wished now that she had not met M'sieur Marius, a thing that surprised her. Marius was kind and good and handsome and innocent. She knew more than Marius. Marius needed to be protected; that was why she had bent the bar back again.

Eponine had a bad feeling, and so was not surprised when _they_ began to appear in the Rue Plumet, silently drifting out of the shadows, coming together not ten feet from her corner. They did not see her, but she could see them, more and more clearly as the clouds overhead began to thin and wisp.

She could smell them.

A whiff of mildew, prison stench, that was Geuelemer.

Then Babet, decay and putrefaction, the reek from the socket of a rotted tooth.

Greasepaint and leather, dust and false faces...Claquesous.

Montparnasse, roses and steel-sharpness and blood.

Why was her mouth watering?

Under all of it, a stink dank and familiar. Old wine. Sweat, and stale breath. The rankle of Paris' filthy stained underthings. The sewer. _Papa._

They were talking as they came together in the street, low voices for low deeds. They would rob the house, go into the garden with Marius, and his little bird. Unless they were stopped.

Eponine would stop them. She stepped out of the darkness, head down, tensed.

“There's a dog.”

They all started. Montparnasse swung an arm her way, then dropped it, fast. “It's Eponine.” Then, just to her: “Don't surprise me when I have a knife. You know not to surprise me with a knife.”

Eponine lifted just her eyes, and looked at him. Montparnasse stepped back, lifting his knife again.

“There's no dog.” Her father stepped forward between them. Eponine's lip curled at the smell coming off of him.

“There is,” she said. “I'm the dog. If you try and pass me, Papa, I'll bark.” A strange deep shiver went down her back. It wasn't the cold. “Maybe I bite, too.” Her voice came out like a growl.

“Eh, _fille,”_ he said, shaking his head. “There are five of us, and one of you. Go away. Or your father will make you mind. I'm the bigger dog.”

“You're no father of mine.”

His hand went up to strike her, and in the Rue Plumet the breeze rose at the same time, the thin clouds scudding away from the face of the moon. Everyone lit up in silver. Eponine caught his wrist, and bent it back, and back, until he was on his knees, and gibbering, and the others all stared.

“I'm the daughter of a wolf.”

She grinned.

Marius and Cosette leapt together when the screaming began in the street, into each others arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if there's more to this tale yet, or not. If there is, it's less a horror than a truly unconventional fix-it ending? Usually I know exactly where I'm going, and this time? My usual sense of a road map has deserted me... But still, I managed to write! and I hope you've enjoyed this bit of spooky season creepiness.


	3. Leader of The Pack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The daughter of a wolf has siblings, and perhaps they deserve the same advantages Eponine has found.

Something was hulking above her, huge and dark in the early dawn.

She wasn’t scared.

Eponine uncurled herself from the ball she had fallen asleep in. Her shoulders both popped, and one hip. She twitched her head to the left, and it gave a snap. She rolled her head then, loosely, and looked up. Oh. It was the elephant. Yesterday she’d thought she could eat an elephant. Today, she felt good. Warm. Her hunger was small, for now.

Her clothes were a disaster. They’d been ragged. Now they were rags. Eponine didn’t think she cared anymore. She thought she might walk through Paris naked now, and nothing would touch her. Although perhaps that wouldn’t do. Even fearless, it was better not to draw attention. It made it easier to circle ‘round unseen. But now she knew the things she hadn’t, before. Another night, she’d get rid of them first, and come back for them after.

There were a lot of things she knew.

Papa would not raise a hand to her, now. Papa would not rise at all.

Marius and the garden with the little bird were safe, for the others would not pass that way. They would not pass any way again.

Montparnasse had gone up over the wall, but Eponine didn’t mind. He’d not wanted to cut her with his knife, and she’d not wanted to cut her teeth in him, for that. She’d heard him, anyway, before she left, through the garden wall. Talking not to Marius, or L’alouette, but to the old man, the one who’d taken her away, so many years before.

 _Don’t put me out. Don’t send me back out there. Monsieur, monsieur, you gave me a lecture, didn’t you? I lost your wallet, but I have your lesson now, do not put me out--_ He’d sounded pathetic. Perhaps he really had learned a thing. Eponine had shown him mercy. Maybe now he would know it better too. She could always find him again if he had not. She knew his blood and steel-sharp scent. The old man had not put Montparnasse out, or not while she’d prowled the base of the wall and waited in the Rue Plumet to see it, and that was something, she thought.

It would never come to pass for her now, with Marius Pontmercy. Somehow that seemed to matter less. Maybe it had already been over, long before. She thought she might yet keep an eye on him. Marius was a good boy, and kind, and knew so little, while she knew so much. When one was strong, one ought to protect things that were good but weak, she thought.

She ought to get up. There were people she ought to find. Some weak things deserved the chance to be strong, strong as Eponine was. _Azelma--_

“Oi!”

The voice was high up over her head, and she looked up again. There was a hole in the belly of the elephant, and the voice came again, from inside of it.

“Wotcher at? You’ll ruin the prop’ty values, sleepin’ on my step. This here’s my house! Scarper!” A small head popped out, then gave a sharp whistle. “’Ponine? Ain’t you wretched! Wanna move in with me, then? Sick of the old man?”

It was her brother. A surprise, but convenient, and maybe that was why she’d fetched up here to begin with. She could smell Gavroche, all lead pencil ends and rainwater and honest dirt, she should have realized this was his place before. Maybe she’d missed it with all the funk of rats.

“Nah,” she said. “He’s gone. But come down. I got a thing for sharing. You’re gonna love it; it’ll keep you warm. And then we’ll go take it to ‘Zelma, too.”

“Dunno, ‘Ponine. Maybe I can’t run all town today. I’m a fam’ly man now.” He puffed up his chest. “I got momes.”

“Huh.” Eponine thought about that. She didn’t question where he’d got them. Gavroche collected things if they went astray. A magpie, only less picky. “How many? Two?”

“Ayup.”

Three of them wouldn’t be enough anyway. Five was better, felt right. “Bring them too. I’ll share.”

“What we all gonna do?”

“Run.”

Gav didn’t come down, but he lowered a rickety ladder. She went up.

No one outside knew anything.

It was late afternoon before they all went down again, together: Eponine, and then Gavroche, and behind them the two little ones, who had smelled like family already and wasn’t that strange? The small boys tumbled over each other like puppies as they followed at her heels.

Bright eyes. Sharp teeth. They were going to collect ‘Zelma from their mother who would not say no, not now, not if she was wise. Eponine was not scared of the old bitch anymore. After they had Azelma, that would be all of them and then night would fall and the moon would rise and they would run together through Paris, sisters and brothers, a family. A pack.

None of them would be cold again.

They would never go hungry.

Eponine grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a bit of an interesting turn--and about what i ought to have expected, trying to force a fic when i had no idea of what i was doing from the outset. I kept trying to make this scary and it just Did Not Want To Be--i hope that doesn't disappoint.  
> See, the problem is that no matter what you do to the Thenardier sibs, it ends up being a fix it, no matter how awful the thing is! Bless their hearts, they deserve to be happy. even if happy means terrorizing the entire city.
> 
> I also admit i now have a headcanon where Gav still plays his part at the barricade but as there's no chance the guard uses silver bullets, when Gav just GETS UP they all run for the hills. Les Amis win, the end.
> 
> Thank you for your patience with my slower than usual pandemic brain pace, and i hope you've enjoyed this odd little ficcy! <3


End file.
